Keble Tips

A collection of tips from students who have attended the Dartmouth-Oxford Program.

Dining Plans

Eating in at Keble

The Hall—keep in mind that the Hall has limited hours and cooking is not permitted in your room. For meal booking at Keble, booking three courses every time is recommended, since we do tend to eat more here than they do. But if you get soup, the main course, sides and desert you should be fine for the rest of the night.

You can also get discounts on Domino’s delivery with an Oxford student ID.

Keep the refrigerator in your room stocked with food. There is a Sainsbury’s approximately five minutes from campus where you can acquire groceries.

Eating Out

You can get quite a few different types of food in town. It’s much more expensive than eating at Keble, which is already paid for. But if you ask around among the students, or look online at Oxford tourist sites, you can find a lot of good places to eat.

There’s a cheap Chinese take out place that’s open late called Wok n Roll which is about a four-minute walk from Keble. A lot of people go there if they don’t like what’s being served at Keble that night, or if they need a late night meal.

The one thing to remember if you’re not planning on eating at Keble is that a lot of places that serve food in town close early. Many people eat in pubs, but their kitchens will close around 7:00 or 7:30 p.m. usually. So don’t expect to find much food past 8:00 p.m. or so. There are a lot of good restaurants on George Street, which is near town center and only about a seven-minute walk from Keble. Late at night there are Kebab stands open all over the place.

Travel

You need to arrange your own travel to and from Keble.

Flying into Heathrow is highly recommended.

Take the Oxford Bus to the last stop on the bus line, and there will be taxis that can take you to Keble for about five pounds. Be sure and have a little extra cash on you before you leave the airport. Normally you won’t need to take a cab from this bus stop since it’s only a five-or-so-minute walk to the back of Keble from there, but if you’re carrying large bags you’ll want to get a cab.

Formal Wear

You will most likely end up attending more than one formal event.

For guys, if you own a tux or suit, take it along.

For girls, take a formal dress.

The porters lodge has gowns for all the Dartmouth students as long as you ask.

If you decide you want to purchase your own, you can go to the “Varsity Store” on Broad Street just after Blackwell’s Book Store. They sell them for 25 pounds.

Student Organizations

Go out of your way to get involved with every organization you can.

British students are more than willing to accept American students for even just one term.

Bodleian Library

Make sure you get to go at least once, as you are only allowed entrance as an Oxford student.

ID Cards

When they send you the paperwork for your ID card, send it back as soon as possible in order to ensure that it’s available when you arrive.

Credit Cards

Before you leave, notify your credit card company(s) that you will be abroad, so they will let your charges go through.

Tutorials

Two classes (tutorials) are allowed a term.

They have been known to be from 2:00-4:00 p.m. or from 6:00-8:00 p.m.

Medical Care

Try not to get sick!

Make sure your insurance covers international health insurance.

Dartmouth Health Plan does cover this, but some others do not.

Accommodations

You will have a single room at Keble. The room is fully furnished with bed and mattress, pillows, desk, study chair, easy chair(s), bookcase and a reading lamp. Linens, including hand and bath towels, will be provided, although you may, if you wish, take your own. You will need to take tea-towels. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are eaten in the Hall, but for your own use in your room, take whatever crockery, cutlery, etc. you want—note: cooking is not permitted in your room.

There are vending machines which dispense cold drinks.

Keble will provide a refrigerator and a kettle. See the College Regulations and Information booklet (a copy will be included in the summer mailing) for requirements about any electrical apparatus you may take. Europe is 240 volts rather than the U.S. 110 volt system, so many electrical appliances will not work there!

Mail

Mail addressed to you at the College will be put in your individual pigeon-hole in the Post-room of the Porters' Lodge.

The address is Keble College, Oxford, OX1 3PG UK Urgent brief phone messages will also be taken by the Lodge Staff: Tel +44 1865 272727.

Computers

Each room is equipped with a high speed network connection giving access to the Internet, college and university networks.

If you have a laptop, you can take it along and they will try to connect it into the network. However, this can be problematic for older laptops which cannot accept Ethernet cards. If you already have an Ethernet card you will want to take it. If they cannot connect you, there are computer rooms at Keble with lots of PCs and a few Macs.

There are also lots of email terminals around the college, and central printers are available over the network. Most Dartmouth students find it easy to access their Dartmouth email account, therefore, they don’t bother to set up an Oxford account. However, you can have an Oxford account if you want one. It will be in the form of [email protected]

You will most likely not be able to connect your computer to the Internet for the first week until you pass the security program.

BRING your own LAN cable.

Cell Phones

If your phone in the U.S. uses a SIM card, then you’ll be able to just get a new SIM card at a local phone store over here. Otherwise you’ll most likely have to get a new phone and SIM card.

There are several Carphone Warehouse stores in town (one on High Street, and one in the Westgate shopping mall). They have really cheap deals on phones that have “top-up” plans. You pay a certain amount and then when you run out of minutes you can pay either online or in one of the stores. The plan we all got allows us to call the U.S. for 5p a minute, which is about nine cents a minute. And you can call within the U.K. for 15p a minute, so it’s actually cheaper to call the U.S. than it is to call within the U.K., but most of us certainly call the U.S. more than the U.K. It’s very cheap to send text messages over here, so we communicate that way quite a bit.

I would definitely recommend getting a cell phone since you can only call within the college with the room phone unless you have an international calling card. And when you’re out at night it’s a good thing to have just for safety reasons.

Going to Town

The fastest way to get into town from Keble is to go out the Pusey Quad exit and take a right. If you stay straight, you’ll walk down the “lamb and flag passage.” You’ll come to a main road, St. Giles Road. From there you can take a left and cross the road to get to Sainsbury’s and if you keep walking you’ll run into High Street and Corn-Market Street where most of the stores are.

Miscellaneous

For most other things, the incoming students can just ask other people at Keble where they should go. Everyone is usually quite receptive and the porters at the lodge are a very good resource as well. They know pretty much everything there is to know about Oxford.